The Billionaire’s Fake Bride: (Crystal Beach Resort Standalone Series: Book 2) Read online

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  The Billionaire’s Fake Bride

  (Crystal Beach Resort Standalone Series: Book 2)

  Hanna Hart

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Other Books In This Series

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Grace

  Why, Grace wondered, on today of all days, did it have to rain.

  Why on her wedding day?

  She looked down at the cigarette fixed between her fingers that she refused to smoke. She’d quit five years ago, after all. But it was a nervous habit she’d developed, having it there between her fingers, burning and holding its ashy paper in a stem at the end of the white stick.

  Grace stared down at it and watched as a breeze touched the ash, and the whole tip came burning down onto her wedding dress.

  “Grace, I’m sorry.”

  She looked up at her fiancé and blinked in surprise.

  “I couldn’t do it,” Shane repeated.

  The day has started beautifully.

  She was getting married on Nani Makai—a private island off the coast of Hawaii inhabited by only the very wealthy.

  Away from the luxurious condos of the rich and famous was the opulent Crystal Beach Romance Resort. She had worked there for years. It was where anyone who was anyone planned their wedding. In fact, she had planned so many beautiful weddings at the resort that when she and Shane got engaged, she begged her boss to let her have the wedding at the seductive, selective club.

  She wore an ivory lace knee-length wedding dress and her mother’s old veil. There were one hundred and thirty guests waiting for her to walk down the aisle.

  Her blonde hair was done up in an array of intricate curls and waves. Her face free from any makeup, save for a thick layering of mascara. She wanted to be natural for her wedding day. To be her true self.

  “What?” she snapped, blinking in irritation as she looked up at Shane.

  She hardly realized she was heaving her breaths. Pressing her back up against the boathouse.

  “I said I’m sorry,” Shane enunciated, his Irish accent coming in thicker than usual. “Please, Gracie, I’m knackered by us.”

  The ceremony was on the beach. When the rain set in, the wedding planners rushed to action, as she'd seen them do so many times in the past.

  They put up elegant, oversized canopies over the beach. The guest’s white chairs were each covered in a yellow sash and pinned with white orchid blooms.

  At the end of the aisle was a white gazebo adorned with yellow hanging flowers that draped down like curtains.

  It was only halfway to the aisle when her best friend Addison had run up to her, eyes wide with some sort of fear that Grace had never seen before.

  “What?” Grace had asked gravely, already knowing somehow that she should be panicked.

  She had figured the storm was too intense and they would have to pause the ceremony and move everything into their indoor location.

  Or maybe, worst case scenario, the gazebo had blown over and caused a panic.

  “Shane left,” Addison said, locking both of her hands on Grace’s shoulders.

  “Why?” Grace asked, not quite grasping her words. “What did he forget?”

  Her friend paused awkwardly and then shook her head.

  “No,” Addison said, “He… called it off.”

  Grace’s arms went cold. “What do you mean?” She winced. “What… now? Today?”

  “I don’t know what happened. He seemed fine and then all the sudden he pulled the pastor aside for like, five minutes, whispering to him. He looked freaked out, Gracie. Really distressed. Then he just hung his head and left.”

  Grace exhaled quickly, suddenly realizing that everyone was still seated at the ceremony down the beach, probably watching her making her way to the gazebo like an idiot. Everyone feeling sorry for her.

  He’d gotten the pastor to tell the audience the wedding was off. Couldn’t even be bothered to cancel their love by his own mouth.

  She ran to the boathouse as fast as she could, asking Addison to guide her guests away from her.

  She didn’t want to be seen. Her heart was cracking apart with emotion. The longer she waited in the boathouse, the angrier she became.

  And then Shane appeared just ten minutes ago, still dressed in his gray suit.

  He tapped on the thick glass window, and she opened the door, stepping outside and leaning against the whitewashed wood paneling of the oversized boathouse.

  Grace pressed a finger against the inside of her upper eyelid, brushing up some of the wet mascara that had clumped her lashes together.

  “I have nothing to say to you,” she snapped, looking out over the ocean at the way the rain washed over it in droves.

  Shane swallowed audibly and followed her eyes. “That doesn’t sound like you,” he said.

  “Actually, you know what? I do. I have a big list of things to say to you.”

  Shane widened his eyes and nodded at her like he had been expecting this.

  “Why did you leave?”

  “I just couldn’t do it, Gracie. It’s too much. I’m sorry. I thought I wanted this but I just… don’t,” he said.

  “You’re just scared!” she shouted with a laugh, flicking the unsmoked cigarette into an empty can on the ground. “Why didn’t you talk to me beforehand? You’re just getting wedding jitter—”

  “—Yeah, I’m petrified!” he interrupted. “But talkin’ to you wouldn’t have made a difference.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you stop me from walking down the aisle? Or hey, why didn’t you bring this up before we spent all this money?” She stammered in disbelief. “Was it your goal to humiliate me?”

  Shane shook his head. He looked stricken, but she couldn’t care less.

  “I was tryin’ to do what you wanted,” he admitted. “I thought I could do this but… I didn't want to get married. I told you that.”

  She laughed bitterly. She finally met his dark eyes and narrowed her brows accusingly. “Then why did you ask me to marry you?”

  He gave a one-shoulder shrug and answered, “I didn’t want to lose you.”

  “And you thought this was the way to keep me?” she scoffed.

  Shane offered a weak smile.

  “When did you know?” she asked, feeling numb under the rain.

  “As soon as I bought the ring,” he said lowly.

  How odd, Grace thought, that Shane’s proposal was the happiest day of her life and probably the
worst day of his.

  “I didn’t want to hurt you. I want to be the guy that wants to marry you. I’m just not.”

  Was he saying she’d forced him into it?

  “You asked me,” she said, enunciating her words firmly. “I didn’t ask you, Shane.”

  “No, I know.”

  She stared at his face. His crooked smile seeming so familiar and warm to her. Yet, she knew, they couldn’t be farther away from each other at this moment.

  He met her eyes and something tense and unspoken passed between them. She could practically feel the resentment he had toward her pressing down on them like water.

  She started to cry. Her voice cracked through her tears as she finally let herself crumble.

  Shane grabbed her arm as she lowered herself onto the sand, pulling her bare legs up against her chest and feeling the wet lace clinging to her skin.

  “Ah, Gracie,” he cooed, slinking down to sit next to her. “I just don’t think I’m in love with you anymore.”

  Grace stopped crying as soon as his words hit the air. She felt a strange coldness running through her body. She inhaled sharply, surprised, and her eyes darted to meet his.

  “You think, or you know?” she asked shakily.

  “I know,” he said evenly.

  “Since when?”

  “Last December,” he said with a shrug.

  One month after they got engaged.

  “That’s sick,” was all she could think to say. “And you kept me dangling here, in love with you, alone, for seven months?” Her outrage was audible.

  “I know, I know,” he said, sounding like a scolded child.

  “I can’t be near you right now,” she snapped, turning away from him.

  “I don’t think you should be alone.”

  She shook her head. “Shane,” she said rigidly, “you need to go.”

  “I think we should talk.”

  “No!” she yelled, crying again. “Just get away from me!”

  Shane went quiet, watching her with a strange reverence.

  “I’ll get Addison,” he finally said, knowing her best friend might be the only one to calm her down.

  Grace was happy to see him go.

  She wasn’t the girl who wanted a man to chase her around after she made a stormy exit. No, when she told someone to leave, she meant it.

  If she were being honest, she didn’t know what she would have done if he stayed. Scream? Slap him? Fall into his arms and beg him to stay?

  Whatever her irrational heartbreak would have prompted her to do, it would have no doubt led to another scene. And the last thing this day needed was another dramatic scene.

  Going home that night was the strangest feeling. Stranger than being left at the altar.

  Grace lived at Crystal Beach Resorts. This was unlike most of her friends, who lived on the mainland. Living at the luxurious resorts was a big deal.

  Most who vacationed there were rich. Those who actually lived there were literal multi-billionaires.

  Not Grace, of course.

  In fact, since planning the wedding, Grace had been living paycheck to paycheck. And now that things had gone so poorly, she was hard up for cash.

  But she worked for the family who owned the island resorts. Since the staff in such positions as hers were required to be on-site, Grace was given modest staff housing. A one-bedroom lodge that was docked from her monthly earnings.

  Grace looked over at the clock to see that it was now one in the morning. She had been wearing her wedding dress for eleven hours.

  Her ears perked back when she heard a knock at the door.

  She opened it and was greeted with Addison’s wide brown eyes, giving her a look of pity that she had been absolutely dreading.

  While she’d spent the day with her parents, the truth one she didn’t want to be around anyone right now. Except for Addison.

  “Hey,” Grace greeted, spinning on her heel back toward her bed.

  Addison followed her and sat cross-legged on the ivory bedsheets.

  After a long sigh, her friend said, “You need anything?”

  Grace flopped down on the bed.

  “Got a time machine?” Grace said, her voice muffled as she buried her head in her pillow.

  “Ahh,” Addison snapped her fingers and Grace watched as she ruffled through her oversized purple leather tote bag. “Shoot. All out.”

  This elicited a small smirk from Grace.

  The two girls stared at each other for a long time before Addison reached over and rubbed her hand along Grace’s back.

  “He said he didn’t love me anymore,” Grace said, erupting into tears for the millionth time today.

  “I know,” Addison hushed. “You told me.”

  “Why would he do this? What happened?”

  Her friend shrugged, looking as puzzled as Grace felt. “Because he’s a jerk.”

  “You called it,” Grace said through her tears.

  Addison squished her lips to the corner of her mouth and then softly said, “Well, lucky for you I’m not the type to gloat.”

  When she had first introduced Shane to her best friend, she had been dying to call Addison at the end of the night. Get the scoop.

  She had rushed to dial her number and was shocked when her friend’s reaction was blasé at best.

  “He’s nice,” she had said with the verbal equivalent of a shrug.

  “He’s nice?” Grace repeated in surprise.

  “I don’t know. He seems like kind of a jerk to me. Sort of full of himself? Or, um, like he says things because he thinks it’s what you want to hear.”

  “You think he’s ‘carbon-copy’ guy?” Grace expressed in shock. This was the term they used for men who agreed with everything you said.

  They would date a hipster and suddenly be into locally sourced coffee and saving the planet. Date a girl obsessed with her thesis, and suddenly he’d be super into his uni grades.

  Grace didn’t think Shane was like that at all. But as it turned out, Addison was right.

  He’d moved to Crystal Beach with her because she had loved it so much, even though he had previously said he was a city guy through and through. He started learning to play the guitar because Grace played. Apparently, he’d even asked her to marry him all because it was what she had wanted.

  “I feel like I didn’t know him at all,” Grace said, snapping back to reality. A reality that no longer had Shane in it.

  “You knew him,” Addison assured her, pressing her thick, black-rimmed glasses up against her nose.

  “I keep going through everything. Our whole relationship, like flipping through a photo album. And I feel like on every ‘picture’ I see I just keep thinking, lie, lie, lie. Everything was a lie!”

  “You’re going to drive yourself crazy. He lied! He humiliated you. He let you drain your bank account for this insane wedding. He wants to leave? Dares to think he can find someone as sweet and awesome as Grace Stevens? I say good riddance and bad luck!” Addison said and mimed spitting on the floor.

  Grace smiled at her friend’s attempt to cheer her up, but the small laugh that escaped her lips only led to more tears.

  “Tell you what,” Addison said and leaned forward, perching her hands flat on the bed. “Let’s take that fabulous honeymoon you have booked to Iceland, and we’ll go together! Screw Shane! We’ll go see the Northern Lights and swim in the Blue Lagoon!”

  “Honeymoon?” Grace repeated the word like it was foreign to her.

  She nearly winced at the mention of it, thinking how much money she’d lost on the trip.

  “I can’t do that,” she said, shaking her head. “I have to go back to work.”

  “Work?” Addison repeated in surprise. “Are you kidding me? No! You have to get away from the island, not submerge yourself in it.”

  “I just need to go back to normal,” she insisted petulantly, though as of twelve hours ago, she had no idea if normal even existed anymore.

  Chapter Two
>
  Cooper

  Cooper slouched against the soft pillow on his bed. The ringer of his phone was off, but he could see the screen lighting up with what would soon be his fourth missed call in a ten-minute span.

  His eyes skimmed the dark room. He’d had the blackout curtains drawn for a whole week.

  With a deep sigh, Cooper picked up his phone and hit the ominous green button.

  “You up?” came the voice of his childhood friend, Paul Atkins. His tone was bright and alive. A stark contrast to the dimly lit bedroom of Cooper’s beachfront condo. “Get up, get up, get up!” Paul chanted loudly.

  “Can I at least say ‘hello’ before you start harassing me?” Cooper teased, and even he could hear how tired his voice sounded.

  “This!” his friend insisted, as though he’d already voiced some sort of argument. “This is what I’m talking about. We’re sick of you holing yourself away in your condo. Come out with us!”

  “I enjoy my cage,” he sniped.

  Paul let out a heavy sigh that muffled the phone.

  “He says he’s not coming,” Paul said, sounding farther away.

  The phone reception went choppy, and Cooper was pretty sure the cell had been snagged away from Paul. His suspicions were confirmed as his brother Levi came on the line.

  “You’re coming!” Levi said, and Cooper had to hide the laugh that escaped his lips at the insistence.

  “To where?”

  “The Queen,” his brother said, referring to the floating seafood restaurant set out on open water just a few miles from shore.

  “Nah. No. Not into it. Goodbye,” he said.

  “Wait!” Levi yelped. “Don’t make me come over there!”